Only the Rich Will Get Drinking Water

Maybe you think the rich deserve their exclusive access to the best houses in the best neighborhoods and the best schools for their kids and the best jobs and the best of everything.

Do you think they deserve all the drinking water?

It's already happening, right here in the US of A.

 

Think Progress:

As the commonwealth’s reservoirs drop to their lowest levels in decades, the government has declared a state of emergency, and implemented strict rationing. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans now have had tap water only every third day, and that tightened this past weekend, giving families water only two days a week.

“It’s been water for one day, then no water for two days,” explained Fernandez. “In the one day you have water, you fill your buckets.”

Government officials are telling residents that now is “not the time” to wash their cars, fill private swimming pools, or hose down their sidewalks and patios. Luis F. Cruz Batista, Director of Puerto Rico’s Office of Management and Budget, told local press: “The rationing affects the rich, the middle class and the poor; it affects children, adults and seniors.”

But the rationing has not hit everyone equally. As poor islanders fill up buckets and bathtubs on the few days they have water, the pools, fountains, and showers of the coastline’s hotels and resorts remain untouched.

“The most affected residents have been those with the fewest resources,” San Juan academic and activist Jose Rivera told ThinkProgress. “But in the hotels and the majority of condominiums, like the one I live in, the rationing either isn’t being done at all, or they’re only partially implementing it. So far, the population has remained calm, but I expect this inequality of sacrifices to eventually provoke protests.”

Rivera added that when public schools reconvene this month, the water rationing will disrupt class schedules and the school breakfast and lunch programs. This will especially harm more than half of Puerto Rican children living in poverty.

For Fernandez, the water rationing policy is a symbol of deeper problem. “I see it as such as parallel of government policy in general,” he said. “The government puts more value into those from abroad than they are concerned about the local situation and the well-being of the public.”

Get Rich Off Global Warming: Plant Your Lawn in Fruit and Veggies

Very, very soon - months, not years from now - 90 percent of the produce in the grocery store is going to disappear because California has run out of water.

The little produce an equally parched Mexico manages to export is likely to cost 10 or 100 times what it costs now.

You wanna pay $50 for a tomato?  Or charge $50 for the ones you grow yourself?

Global Warming is likely to bring multiple F5 tornadoes to Kentucky in spring, along with tree-killing ice storms in February, heat waves in August and forest fires in fall, but we will remain much better off in food-growing than the deserts of the West.

Think Progress:

Almonds get a lot of the attention when it comes to California’s agriculture and water, but the state is responsible for a dizzying diversity of produce. Eaten a salad recently? Odds are the lettuce, carrots, and celery came from California. Have a soft spot for stone fruit? California produces 84 percent of the country’s fresh peaches and 94 percent of the country’s fresh plums. It produces 99 percent of the artichokes grown in the United States, and 94 percent of the broccoli. As spring begins to creep in, almost half of asparagus will come from California.

“California is running through its water supply because, for complicated historical and climatological reasons, it has taken on the burden of feeding the rest of the country,” Steven Johnson wrote in Medium, pointing out that California’s water problems are actually a national problem — for better or for worse, the trillions of gallons of water California agriculture uses annually is the price we all pay for supermarket produce aisles stocked with fruits and vegetables.

Up to this point, feats of engineering and underground aquifers have made the drought somewhat bearable for California’s farmers. But if dry conditions become the new normal, how much longer can — and should — California’s fields feed the country? And if they can no longer do so, what should the rest of the country do?

 Read the whole terrifying thing.

Do You Know Who Owns Your Water?

Yes, I mean "owns."  Used to be that all drinking water in the United States was supplied by your friendly local city or county government.  If not "friendly," at least subject to the wrath of voters if the water wasn't drinkable, available and affordable.

But over the last 30 years, the curse of privatization has turned municipal water supplies over to greedy and unaccountable corporations, who don't give a shit about quality or quantify but constantly raise the price.

You know that bottled water you buy by the dozen because you don't trust what comes out of the tap? It's tap water.  Stolen by the billions of gallons out of California by international corporations who don't give a flying fuck that the residents who actually own that water are currently dying of thirst.

If your water company decided it could make more money by selling your water overseas, what recourse would you have?

Lane Reports:

Gov. Steve Beshear has proclaimed May 3-9 as Drinking Water Week in Kentucky to recognize the importance of source water protection and conservation, as well as the value, importance and fragility of our state’s water resources.

Kentuckians can conserve water by following a few simple actions both inside and outside the home:

• Check for leaks in toilets and pipes.
• Run full loads in clothing and dishwashing machines.
• Keep drinking water cooling in the refrigerator.
• Replace old showerheads with high-efficiency models.
• Mulch bushes and trees to retain moisture.
• Check for hose and nozzle leaks.
• Water early or late when temperatures are low to reduce evaporation.
• Recycle rainwater with barrels and buckets for watering plants.
• Plant water and drought-tolerant plants to reduce the need to water.

 And demand your local officials take your water supply from that corporations and put it back in the hands of the people.

MotherFrackers Stealing This Town's Drinking Water

Water is a basic human right.  It's hard for Kentuckians still dealing with flooding to wrap our brains around the monster drought in California, but the fact is that corporations are buying up "water rights" everywhere.  Whether you don't have enough water, or you have too much, or you have just enough, the privatizers are out to steal it.

Think Progress:

A tiny town in eastern Ohio is being sued by an Oklahoma-based oil and gas company that bought more than 180 million gallons of water from the town last year. That water use, combined with a dry fall, prompted the village to temporarily shut off water to Gulfport Energy. Now, a second company has a water agreement, and there might not be enough water to go around.

Gulfport Energy alleges in the lawsuit that the village of Barnesville, population 4,100, violated its agreement to provide water from its reservoir by entering into a contract with oil and gas company Antero Resources. Gulfport says the village’s contract with Antero allows for withdrawals beyond what Gulfport is allowed to take.

Gulfport’s water supply can be shut off whenever water levels in the reservoir create a risk to the health and safety of the village residents and businesses. Last fall, the reservoir was down three feet below average when village officials stopped all outside withdrawals.

“We felt like we had to shut everyone off to protect the regular users,” said village solicitor Marlin Harper. “We don’t have unlimited water.”

But here’s the catch: Only Gulfport pumped water out of the reservoir last year. So even though, as Harper admits, the Antero contract has “a little bit of a priority” over the Gulfport contract, that’s not the reason Gulfport’s water supply was shut off. During the unusually dry fall, water withdrawals by Gulfport alone were too much for the reservoir to sustain.

Stop Drinking Bottled Water: It's Stupid

First, almost half of bottled water is municipal tap water. You're paying 100 times what it cost to get the same thing out of your home faucet.

Second, all that plastic is a fucking crime, even if you do recycle it.

Third, if you're buying the expensive stuff that really comes from underground springs, thanks, motherfucker!  You're contributing to the California drought that's going to kill American agriculture.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

More on America’s most ridiculous industry: bottled water. Where are the sources of that water?

Yeah, that’s sustainable.

But that only accounts for 55% of the bottled water. What about the rest?

The other 45 percent comes from the municipal water supply, meaning that companies, including Aquafina and Dasani, simply treat tap water—the same stuff that comes out of your faucet at home—and bottle it up. (Weird, right?)

Not weird at all. It shows that you can create a fake problem (there is something wrong with the tap water!), develop a consumer market around it, and then sell people the same water they would be drinking if they turned on their faucet. Now that’s a capitalist success story!

Cutting Off Water Is Murder

The only reason we are not paying by the minute for the air we breathe is because corporations haven't figured out how to corner the supply.

Yet.

Think Progress:

As the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department moves to shut off water to thousands of residents who are delinquent on their bills, a coalition of activists is appealing to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights to intervene on behalf of the bankrupt city’s most vulnerable citizens.

Their report, filed Wednesday with the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, alleges that the DWSD crackdown is part of an effort “to sweeten the pot for a private investor” to take over the city’s heavily-indebted water and sewer system as part of Detroit’s broader bankruptcy proceedings.

One of the activist groups behind the report, the Detroit People’s Water Board, notes that city residents have seen water rates more than double over the past decade at the same time that the city’s poverty rate rose to nearly 40 percent, putting the cost of basic running water beyond reach for tens of thousands of households. Earlier this week, city lawmakers voted to raise water rates by a further 8.7 percent.

SNIP

One key piece of the activists’ complaint has to do with allegedly disparate treatment of residential and commercial clients by the DWSD. The People’s Water Board claims that delinquent business entities “have not been targeted in the same way as residential users,” a claim the department strongly disputes.

You will be stunned to learn that this is really all about turning a public service - and one that is literally life and death - over to private corporations for their profit. Companies all over the world are slavering over Detroit's municipal corpse, sharpening their claws to fight for the most lucrative pieces.
 
I will never understand how anyone can think our austerity-starved government presents any kind of threat when we are losing everything we have to monster corporations every day.

Chile Protects World Food Supply From Corporate Greed

Expect the full weight of multi-national corporations and their obedient governments to fall on the rebellious nation immediately.

This month, rural women, indigenous communities, and farmers in Chile found themselves on the winning end of a long-fought battle against a bill that had come to be known by many in this country as simply, the “Monsanto Law.”

The bill, which would have given multinational agribusiness corporations the right to patent seeds they discover, develop or modify, was withdrawn by the Chilean government now controlled by newly elected members of the center-left coalition known as the New Majority, amid concerns that the law would bring harm to the country’s small and mid-sized farmers.

This isn't about patent law or the free market or any of the other lies corporations use to cover up their real agenda.

This is about the ability of human beings to grow the food we need to survive. Allowing corporations to patent seeds - the source of all food - allows corporations to decide who lives and who dies.

What's next? Selling off corporate rights to rainwater? Do you really think there aren't law firms all over the world frantically working on that one?